This 8 week online introduction to parapsychology will include seven (7) classes by Dr. Nancy Zingrone, and a guest lecture by a prominent parapsychologist. Classes will begin on Monday, April 29th and continue until Monday June 17th. Classes will be broadcast each Monday (except Memorial Day) from 6:30pm – 8pm Eastern Time, but the courses will also be recorded so that you can view them when it is most convenient for you.

In this introductory online course, Dr. Nancy Zingrone will present a series of seven (7) online classes to introduce students to the basics of parapsychology; the scientific study of paranormal experiences. This interesting course will use case studies and experiments to explore extrasensory perception (ESP), psychokinesis (mind over matter), near death and out of body experiences, apparitions (including ghosts), and modern research in parapsychology. Students taking this course will gain a deeper understanding of subjective paranormal experiences and the nature of consciousness, and learn that there are a variety of ways to explore these fascinating experiences.

Julie Beischel, PhD, of the Windbridge Institute conducts a research to examine the potential clinical benefits of personal mediumship readings, especially during bereavement. The project is called the Bereavement And Mediumship (BAM) Study.

You can see the video where she describes the study below. They are also looking for some donations to conduct the study and you can donate by visiting here. The Web site of the project is http://www.afterlifescience.com/.

Update: On April 2, the newspaper wrote a further article where they report on the leading savant researcher, Dr. Darold A. Treffert, expressing interest in the case.

The Khaleej Times newspaper site reports of an intriguing case of a 9-year-old Indian girl, diagnosed with autism and ADHD, who can telepathically read her mother’s mind. And quite well, it appears.

The article has some some background about the girl and her family but to me the more interesting parts were the tests that the newspaper reporters performed with the girl and, following the newspaper’s inquiry, the tests that were performed later by a group of specialists from the Child Guidance Clinic in Sharjah.

The specialist psychiatrist at Sunny Speciality Medical Centre in Sharjah, Dr Jeena Fiji, who headed the team, has certified witnessing “the strength of Nandana to read her mother’s thoughts, desires and intentions.”

The results of all tests showed that the girl could type on a computer or say words, numbers or whole sentences that her mother was thinking, either sitting across her in the same room or even while being in a different room in the house.

Here are some more quotations from the article. The first is from the test arranged by the newspaper:

In our test, Sandhya was first given a note. It read “044050799 – the office number of Khaleej Times.” As soon as she read it in her mind, Sandhya sat with Nandana across a table. The computer was kept in such a way that the keyboard faced the daughter and the monitor faced the mother.

When her mother asked her to start typing, Nandana started keying in the numbers without even constantly looking at her mother. As she typed 044050799, it became evident to us that the child can actually read her mind!

The second test consisted of a whole sentence:

When Nandana successfully completed the first test, we decided to try her telepathic skill. This time the note given to her mother read: “Can I have some warm water please?”
The result came out as a sentence without any space between the words and with some minor spelling mistakes in between. But, it was still as amazing as the first instance.

The tests that were done at a later time by the above experts:

Nandana had come with her mother Sandhya Unnikrishnan. A poem of Grade 2 level was written and given to Sandhya. After her mother had read the poem in her mind, Nandana was asked to type in the laptop provided to her.

Nandana could type the entire poem without any prompt. A six digit number was also written and given to Sandhya, which too, Nandana could type after reading her mother’s mind.

You can read the entire article and see the photographs of the girl in the original article on Khaleej Times: Miracle girl.

You can follow and participate in a discussion on this topic in the Skeptiko forum thread “Psychic girl“.

Below is a repost of an article that I published back in 2005. The old one is now offline for technical reasons.

Recently I’ve stumbled upon a set of easy exercises that are called ‘Hermes gymnastics’. The actual referred person is Hermes Trismegistus, who is believed to have been highest priest in Ancient Egypt. He is credited with writing a great number of books, of which only 3 seem to have survived till our days.

Anyway, there’s a set of easy daily exercises which are called on his name. They are somewhat popular in russian literature on such topics but I’ve found no reference to them in the English world. I will translate them for English, maybe for the first time in print.

I’ve been doing these exercises for several weeks now, every morning and in the evenings, after work. I find them very easy to perform and yet they make me feel much better every time I do them and they seem to raise my energy levels (which is the exercises’ original intent).

The practice of the exercises can be divided into 4 parts. Two of them are the actual exercises and the other two are complementary.

The first part. Warm up.

This should performed before the exercises in morning. It consists of warming up, better by running for 5 to 20 minutes. You can run on the spot, if you’re doing them at home. If you’re doing the exercises in the evening, this can be skipped.

The second part. Power exercises.

This is a set of three exercises which energize the body. Some common notes on power exercises set:Each exercise consists of:

Relaxed position.

Short and forceful inhalation through the nose (giving an air strike on the throat). In that time the described position is reached with maximum speed and the whole body muscles should be tightened as much as possible.

While all the muscles are tight, hold breath for 4 seconds. After a year or so of practice, this time can be increased to 6 seconds. More than that is harmful.

Exhale all the air at once through the mouth making the ‘Ha’ sound as air exits. At the same time relax all the muscles as fast as possible and return to the relaxed position.

Breath normally for 4 seconds.

Notes: The change from the relaxed state to the tense should be as fast as you can. Gradually progress with your training. The synchronization of breathing with the movements is very important for maximum benefit. Exercises should be performed with eyes closed and concentration on movement and breathing.

Now to the exercises themselves:

1. Exercise ‘Cross’

Short, powerful breath in. At the same time, clench fists, raise tense arms and move them behind the back on the shoulders height, throw back the head and arch the body. Tighten all the muscles of your body in this position. Hold breath for 4 seconds.

Exhale fast and fully through the mouth, bend the body forward, hands relaxed down, almost reaching the floor. Shake the hands crossed for better relaxation and return to the original position. Relax fully for 4 seconds. Free breathing.

Repeat the exercise 4 times.

2. Exercise ‘Axe’

Instantly grip palm together, finger crossed, like holding an axe, take a fast, short breath. At the same time straighten the back, raise the hands from the right side behind the back, like swinging an axe. Arch the back as much as possible and drop the head back. Tighten muscles. Hold breath for 4 seconds.

Forceful exhale through the mouth and with a powerfull turn through the left side return to the original position. Body is bent forward, palms apart. Relax for 4 seconds.

Perform the exercise 4 times. Two as described, and the other two in the opposite direction (switch left and right).

3. Exercise ‘Disc thrower’

Short breath in, clench fists, throw the right hand forward and take the left behind, turning the body in the direction of the imagined throw, eyes turning with the motion. Hold the position of the disc thrower. Tighten all the muscles in the body. Hold breath and position for 4 seconds.

Exhale fast through the mouth and return to the original position. Relax fully for 4 seconds.

Perform 4 times: two times as described, then switch hands.

Third part.

These exercises distribute energy into all muscles of the body. These are mostly the same exercises as in part 2 but they are to be performed slowly, with no tension in order to discharge previously tense muscles and charge those that didn’t participate. The breathing is deep. Perform exercises in accordance with the breathing described below.

First exercise.

Inhale through the nose for 4 seconds. At the same time spread the hands to the sides on shoulder level. Hold your breath for 4 seconds. Move the hands farther behind back.

Exhale through the mouth for 4 seconds and at the same time slowly return the hands into original position.

Repeat 4 times.

Second exercise.

Stand with feet a little spread. Bend body forward, touching toes with your fingers. The knees are not bent.

Inhale for 4 seconds while straightening the body, stretching hands forward on the breast level. Hold your breath for 4 seconds. At the same time raise the hands above the head and behind the back.

Exhale through the mouth for 4 seconds and at the same time slowly return into original position.

Repeat 4 times.

Third exercise.

Stand straight. Spread the feet about half a meter. Hands stretched to the sides on the shoulders level.

Inhale for 4 seconds and hold the breath for 4 seconds. At the same time turn the body right with the hands still stretched to the sides so, that you’ll see the wall behind you. Do not raise the feet of the floor.

Exhale through the mouth for 4 seconds and at the same time slowly return into original position.

Repeat 4 times: 2 times to the right, 2 to the left.

Forth exercise.

Lie on your back. Put both palms with finger crossed below the head.

Inhale for 4 seconds and at the sime raise the feet 90 degrees. Hold the breath for 4 seconds and at the same time perform 2 circular motions with the feet to the right.

Exhale for 4 seconds and slowly return the feet on the floor.

Repeat 4 times: two times turning the feet to the right, 2 times to the left.

Forth part. Stabilization.

This is reached by taking shower switching from cold to hot water every 2 minutes. The contrast of the water should be increasing over time. After three months reach its maximum and stay at that level. Always start with cold water and finish with hot. The first 4 months the timing is 2 minutes for hot cold and hot showers. On the fourth months – 3 minutes and then 4 minutes each.

I hope you will follow the advice and perform the exercises and I promise you will feel better during the day and in the long term.

The following talk, recently released on the TED web site is a good explanation of what meditation is. The speaker, Andy Puddicombe, explains meditation through simple examples and through… juggling. No religious colors are present either. Highly recommended.

Back in 2007 I wrote an article about Rupert Sheldrake [experiment with the talking parrot](http://www.mind-energy.net/archives/252-Parrot-demonstrating-telepathy-the-NKisi-project.html), N’kisi.

In that experiment Rupert, together with parrot’s owner, Aimee Morgana, tested the bird for a possible telepathic link between it and Aimee.

The results were published in a paper and suggested strong above-chance results for the parrot having a psychic connection to Aimee.

The news is a recently-published YouTube video from Rupert Sheldrake’s lecture where he tells about this experiment. And this video contains a footage from the experiment. It’s remarkable, touching, and funny.

I originally learned of the video from the [Skeptiko podcast forum](http://forum.mind-energy.net/skeptiko-podcast/) and you might want to read what [others in the community have to say about this video](http://forum.mind-energy.net/skeptiko-podcast/4615-rupert-sheldrake-presents-footage-psychic-parrot.html) and even join the discussion.

Cassi Vieten and Dean Radin of IONS (Institute of Noetic Sciences), announced a planned experiment at Burning Man 2012 to test Mind over Matter interaction. The participants will try to affect a Random Number Generator (RNG) using their minds. Their efforts will be visualized using a “Huge Freakin’ Laser”, as they say. The laser will turn greener as the deviation increases and more red as it increases.

The organizers believe that the large number of people present at Burning Man will have a mesurable effect on the RNGs. Dean Radin has performed similar experiments in a laboratory conditions, even with online participants but taking it into the public and into such a large event as Burning Man may have even better results and also an increased media exposure.

IONS is asking the public to support the experiment financially. Their goal is to raise $2000 “to pay for computers, RNGs, lasers, etc”.

Telepathy is one of these subjects that intrigue many people because of its possible practical consequences. Twin telepathy – the possible connection between twins appears to be a relatively known fact, especially to many twins. There are a lot of stories about this phenomenon and some research has been done in the field. I’d like to present some sources to ignite your interest.

I first wrote about this in an article more than 6 ago, Telepathy experiments with identical twins. I presented a TV “study” there but what I loved about this article is a comment that I’ve received. Here’s an excerpt from this comment:

As a mother, I have experienced this phenomenon myself. The first times were when my first son was born. He developed an infection and was in a special care baby unit for the first week of his life. The unit was three floors below my room and yet every time my baby randomly woke up during the day or night, I knew, and was sitting at the door ready to go down to breast feed him when the nurse called up for me. The urge to go to him was even strong enough to wake me from a deep sleep.

Knowing when he needed me continued very strongly and he was 5 or 6 before it began to lessen. On one occasion, when he was three, I was with some of the other mums in the kitchen at a birthday party when I suddenly couldn’t breathe. I rushed through to find him and a much older boy had sneaked him into a bedroom under a pretext and was trying to strangle him. My son was blue in the face and passing out…

Early in the evening of 27 November 1975, the writer and television personality Ross McWhirter was shot in the head and chest by two gunmen on the doorstep of his north London home. He was rushed to hospital, but was declared dead on or shortly after arrival, before his identical twin brother Norris could reach his bedside…

…I was able to get an eye-witness account from somebody who had been with Norris McWhirter at the time of the shooting and yes, he had unmistakably reacted. Moreover, he had reacted in a dramatic way, almost as if he too had been shot – by an invisible bullet.

There’s another article by Guy Lyon Playfair at the Paranormalia site where he writes about twin telepathy and presents the following information, among other:

In 2004 the Department of Twin Research and Genetic Epidemiology at King’s College London sent a questionnaire to the 10,000 twins on its books that included a question never asked before, to my knowledge, by a scientific body: ‘Do you have the ability to know what is happening to your co-twin when you are not there?’. More than half (54%) said yes or maybe, only 46% said no. What was particularly intriguing about these results, apart from the fact that there are some 5,000 twins out there who think they have or might have experienced telepathy, was the fact that nearly twice as many identical as fraternal (non-identical) ones said yes.

If you’d love to read some more stories from twins, I suggest you read the comments to a twin telepathy article on about.com. The article itself is not as interesting as readers’ account, in my opinion.

As to scientific research. There appear to be some proper research done on twins. One was published in the Science magazine in 1965. Two researchers from the Department of Ophthalmology at Jefferson Medical College in Philadelphia published an article in the Science journal titled “Extrasensory electroencephalographic induction between identical twins”. The results showed striking correlation between their minds. Here’s a link to the (very short) abstract. The whole paper can be bought on the site.

Another research was performed more recently by Dr. Dean Radin, one of the leading psi researchers today. His paper, “Event-Related Electroencephalographic Correlations Between Isolated Human Subjects” (PDF), comes to the following conclusion:

Under certain conditions, the EEG of a sensorially isolated human subject can become correlated with event-related potentials in a distant person’s EEG. This suggests the presence of an unknown form of energetic or informational interaction.

To sum things up, there appears to both some scientific and vast anecdotal evidence to a telepathic connection between twins. Especially so between identical twins.

If you have own stories like these, or heard them first-hand, write them in the comments.

I often wondered how do psychic people feel about being psychic. I wanted to understand how it affects their lives. I think the blog post from Craig Weiler, What Is It Like To Be Psychic?, and the comments to this post from other psychics make a good introduction into this topic.

I’d love to quote some excerpts from the post and the comments but I suggest you also go and read the whole piece.

I have trouble imagining what it would be like to not be psychic. When I have tried to do this, it comes across as condescending towards other people, which is not my intent. On the other hand, I have a duty to tell the truth, which is this: not being psychic feels like a cold barren place to me. I do not understand how people can live this way without going insane from the torture of being cut off from the feeling of connectedness. It feels horrible to me when I imagine it.

I’m not sure what to think about it. Certainly most of us, “regulars” don’t got insane but apparently we miss quite a lot. Below are a couple of examples of this connectedness, as I see it. The first one is personal about him.

…In fact, nothing terrible is ever going to happen to me; I know instinctively that this is not in my future… The main reason that nothing terrible will ever happen to me is that I can sense bad paths in my life in the areas of health and relationship and steer clear of them long before they cause me damage.

The second one is about other people.

I can see things through other people’s perception, provided that they are not too screwed up, although this is always my perception seeing theirs, so there is some translation going on.

Craig also explains in the post how he perceives information and what he has to do and not do to access it. He concludes with the notion of “connectedness”, which is something that many sensitive or enlightened people report.

And of course, there is the connectedness. There is a sense of belonging to something vast, something much greater than myself that completely transcends my individual life. All I can say is that it is truly beautiful.

The comments also have some interesting points of view in them. For example, the first comment starts with a rather surprising statement: “Most of the time, I just say it’s boring.” Or consider the following several excerpts from the comments:

For me, being highly sensitive can be fun when toying with people. On the flip side, it is a frightening state knowing an event will happen and not being able to stop it, find it, warn or avoid it. But worse is when it involves other people. A feeling of helplessness and dread dominate until the event passes…

A long, interesting, comment opens with the following:

I know or see things ahead of the news pretty frequently. I saw (in my head) the tsunami in Japan as it was happening. It looked like the end of the world.

Psychics can feel disconnected from society too and some of them mention the hostility that they meet because they’re psychic:

I also have to read online that I “don’t exist.”. “Psychics are not real”, is what people say all the time. “They will take your money and make a fool of you”, say the skeptics. “They are delusional,” others say.

There are much more gems in the comments. It seems that people were touched by Craig’s post and other psychics allowed themselves to open their hearts and their virtual mouths.

The Atlantic University is conducting an interesting study and asks people to participate in an online survey.

Below is the message from the researchers:

We are interested in learning more about a variety of human experiences, some of which are unusual, but are by no means uncommon in the general population. We are undertaking an online survey to explore individual differences, synesthesia (the tendency for some people to experience two senses together, e.g., colored words or numbers; tasting shapes; spatially organized calendars, etc.), and a variety of anomalous experiences (for example, extrasensory perception).

We would very much appreciate it if you would take the time to complete this online questionnaire, even if you have never experienced the things described on the questionnaire.

Please email Dr. Christine Simmonds-Moore if you have any questions about the survey.
Christine Simmonds-Moore, Ph.D.
University of West Georgia, csimmond@westga.edu